Doing the tourist thing and birding are not necessarily optimally the at the same time. We have had a relaxed pace for looking around the Pensacola area. Tuesday I bought a couple of field guides for Florida birds. I really like the color plates in
Florida's Birds by Maehr and Kale, but found that the
Birds of Florida by Alsop was more useful. My wife and son were patient to let me do a little dedicated looking on the west end of
Santa Rosa Island after we had toured
Fort Pickens. A
Mississippi Kite was my first spot when walking out into the bush as seen in the photograph to the left. On the drive out we saw Brown Pelicans, Great Cormorant, Herring Gulls, and Osprey. On the drive out of
Gulf Islands National Seashore park on the way back to Pensacola, there was a Green Heron just off the road in the low vegetation. The
Gulf barrier islands are pretty cool - parts of Santa Rosa Island are only 300 feet wides and have sparse tufts of beach grass and other plants to hold the sand together, while other parts like in the photograph above have more complex combinations of
vegetation. Inland, I spotted Northern Mockingbird, American Crow, European Starling, and Tree Swallow.
Mississippi Kite was my first spot when walking out into the bush as seen in the photograph to the left. On the drive out we saw Brown Pelicans, Great Cormorant, Herring Gulls, and Osprey. On the drive out of Gulf Islands National Seashore park on the way back to Pensacola, there was a Green Heron just off the road in the low vegetation. The Gulf barrier islands are pretty cool - parts of Santa Rosa Island are only 300 feet wides and have sparse tufts of beach grass and other plants to hold the sand together, while other parts like in the photograph above have more complex combinations of vegetation. Inland, I spotted Northern Mockingbird, American Crow, European Starling, and Tree Swallow.
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